One of the 12 children on a doctor visit not long after the BMJ articles were published in January.

By Dan Olmsted

In its attack on Dr. Andrew Wakefield in January, The British Medical Journal said he “manufactured” data to fabricate a link between the measles-mumps-rubella shot and the onset of autism in 12 children, setting off a worldwide vaccine scare.

Author Brian Deer questioned whether the children even had the disorder. If they did not, of course, that would be a devastating blow to Wakefield’s work. “First to crack was ‘regressive autism,’ the bedrock of his allegations,” wrote Deer, based on his seven-year investigation of Wakefield’s 1998 report. Just one child -- Case 2 -- clearly had regressive autism, he asserted.

But that charge is false. Take Child 11, whose circumstances we described in the last article in this series. Child 11 clearly had regressive autism – just as he clearly developed autism after the MMR shot, not before it, as Deer falsely reported in the BMJ (see HERE).

Once again, only Brian Deer claims otherwise.

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When I first spoke to Father 11 earlier this year, it was by phone. I had dropped off a copy of my book at the guard’s entrance to his gated enclave in Southern California, with a note on the back of my business card that I was interviewing families of the 12 children described in Wakefield’s Lancet paper, and would like to speak with him while I was in the area.

He called the next morning.

“My son was diagnosed in 1994,” he told me. Until 15 months, “my son was a healthy young baby, and after he was given the MMR he came down with otitis media (an ear infection) and later came down with pneumonia. He was just slowly regressing, after several months. It was almost unnoticeable.”

The father and I arranged to meet about an hour later at a coffee shop nearby. At this point he hadn’t read Deer’s article and wasn’t aware of its contents – he was just unguardedly describing what happened to his son. He showed me a letter he had written to Wakefield at the Royal Free Hospital in London in 1997 that confirmed what he told me.

“My son at age 15 months, was immunized with the Merck MMR vaccine and became ill for the next several months. As his pediatric records indicate he came down with a viral infection, and shortly thereafter viral pneumonia. His condition slowly deteriorated over time, and was diagnosed as being autistic at age 3. The onset of his autistic-like behaviors began around 18 months.”

This was a straightforward chronology, whatever one might think of the cause-and-effect issue: Normal development. A shot. Illnesses. Regression. Autism. And it wasn’t just the father saying so. His letter continued:

“After going to three prominent children’s hospitals for an evaluation of his condition in California, the medical community concurred that his condition was psychological and that the situation was hopeless. He was diagnosed as moderate to severe, with no speech, no eye contact, and cognitive function at 6 months overall.”

In March of 1994, he took his son to a specialist affiliated with a major American university. In this article, I’m not naming the doctor, but I know his identity, and in fact unearthed the text of comments he made a couple of years later to a national autism group.

“One of the striking feature [sic] in all autistic patients that we have studied,” he said, “is a strong association between immunization with MMR and the development of autism (regressive autism).” That parenthetical reference -- regressive autism -- is in the original.

Put aside again the issue of whether the MMR triggered autism. Here is a doctor saying publicly that all – all – the autism patients he studied were characterized by regressive autism. That included Child 11. And that's on top of diagnoses from three prominent children's hospitals. This family had the money to try to help their son, and they used it, creating an unusually detailed record on the nature and timing of his disorder. All of this occurred before the child got anywhere near the Royal Free Hospital.

How, you may ask, did Deer and the BMJ decide this child’s diagnosis was in doubt, that it was part of a questionable pattern in which Wakefield “fixed” the facts in furtherance of “a hoax”? That the children were not even autistic? Well, that requires a little further digging.

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The BMJ’s report on Wakefield is constructed like a maze; you can get lost at every turn. The first article, on January 5, starts with Father 11 and uses him to convict – not just indict – Wakefield of what Deer calls "frauds." But for a coherent bill of particulars of each “fraud,” you must read the sidebar titled “How the Link Was Fixed.” The first bullet point states that "only one child clearly had regressive autism."

And what are the details of that blockbuster charge?

Well, a chart with the BMJ article purports to compare the 12 children’s real medical records with those falsified in the Lancet paper. The Lancet reported that Child 11 had a diagnosis of regressive autism, but Deer puts a question mark there.

That’s as far as the printed article goes. But in fine print at the end of the article, there’s this: “The version of this article on BMJ.com contains full footnotes.”

To BMJ.com we go, still in search of evidence that Child 11’s regressive autism diagnosis is questionable. Online, you click on “Web Extra.” There you find the same chart as in the print version, this time with footnotes, including Footnote 87 next to the question mark about Child 11’s diagnosis. It reads, in full:

“Documentation is incomplete. As with other children in the series, child 11 does not appear to have been neuropsychiatrically assessed at the Royal Free, which had no department for child development and no paediatric neurologist. The hospital discharge summary refers to “autism”, and the father recalls a diagnoses [sic] in California that his son was “autistic”. According to the father, the boy never started to talk at an appropriate age. “Speech didn’t come in,” he said. “My wife thought about having another kid, and she said, ‘No I’m going to wait till he starts speaking.’ Even at age 2, no speech.” Child 11 received MMR at 14 months. [sic]

This, then, is the entire case for questioning Child 11’s diagnosis. At least four tactics here are worth noting:

* Misdirection. Whether the Royal Free pediatric gastrointestinal unit is set up to diagnose developmental problems is irrelevant in light of the qualified professional assessments already made.

* Omission. Writing that the father recalls that his son was diagnosed as “autistic” omits the crucial fact that multiple medical professionals said so. The dubious-sounding parental “recall” is not the issue here. The air quotes around “autistic” make it seem like some sort of West Coast diagnosis du jour rather than the confirmed clinical description of a severely disabled child.

* Suppression. Regardless of the child’s language development – which can be quite variable in boys in infancy -- the critical fact is that he lost skills and developed autism after the MMR shot at 15 months (not 14 months.) The quote, "Even at age 2, no speech," is a complete red herring -- since any developmental problem after 15 months could implicate the MMR rather than point to a pre-existing problem.

* Falsehood. There is no factual basis for claiming that “incomplete” records make the diagnosis questionable.

The “Web Extra” itself is unusual. It begins: “This is an author’s background document giving information additional to the peer-reviewed report ‘How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed’ by Brian Deer, published in the BMJ in January 2011.”

BMJ Editor Fiona Godlee has stated that the BMJ articles were peer-reviewed and carefully fact-checked. Does this wording mean the Web Extra fell outside those parameters? Yet it is the only basis for crucial claims made in the BMJ proper.

Regardless, we have so far shown that Child 11, contrary to assertions made by the British Medical Journal, unquestionably had n diagnosis of regressive autism before his father ever contacted Andrew Wakefield at the Royal Free Hospital, and that those symptoms did in fact begin after the MMR shot was given. Because Child 11 was the initial and most detailed case reviewed in the BMJ article -- and because Father 11 is the only parent actually hostile to Wakefield's work, making him Deer's best and only witness -- one might reasonably inquire whether others among the Lancet children were even more vulnerable to the same pattern of misdirection, omission, suppression and falsehood.

We will dig into that, but first we need to tumble further down the rabbit hole created by the BMJ’s claims about Child 11.

Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism. He is the co-author, with Mark Blaxill, of The Age of Autism – Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-made Epidemic, published in paperback in September by Thomas Dunne Books.

Josh;
Why would you say that?
This article says; that the father says, that after the 15 month vaccines his son started having ear infections, viral infections, viral pneumonia, ear infections.

Same thing for mine -- so I can related-- my kids' immmune systems were so out of whack that they have trouble fighting off lots of stuff viral and strep.

“My son at age 15 months, was immunized with the Merck MMR vaccine and became ill for the next several months. As his pediatric records indicate he came down with a viral infection, and shortly thereafter viral pneumonia. His condition slowly deteriorated over time, and was diagnosed as being autistic at age 3. The onset of his autistic-like behaviors began around 18 months.”

I find it interesting that we are missing a key point when you look at the above article. The note from the father said the cognitive issues started at 6 months but the vaccination came at 15 months. So the autistic symptoms started before the vaccination. Also, I thought I read that the parents recieved money to assist in getting the appropriate results.

Turning to the review this morning, I see that it has been "corrected" to reflect the fact that the film shows footage of children in iron lungs. In other words, the reference to iron lungs has been entirely dropped from the review.

Sounds like the reviewer wasn't paying very close attention, doesn't it?

RE: Anderson Cooper and his ilk. I recently read "The CIA and the Media" by Carl Bernstein. It was published in 1977 and doesn't mention CNN or Cooper, but we can have suspicions, especially of someone who spent a couple of summers interning at the CIA. I wouldn't expect too much swimming upstream from Mr. Cooper.

May I respectfully suggest that if he has not already done so, John Stone gets in touch with Labour MP Tom Watson. This guy is like a dog with a bone with regard to Murdoch and he may not be aware of this whole evil saga. He will of course be aware of Dr Wakefield and of the MMR debacle but not of the Murdoch involvement.

Hand him a dossier concerning the links, Murdoch, Glaxo, The Times, Deer, Dr Harris, Godlee and the whole dam bunch of them. Give 'em their Parliamentary enquiry if that's what 'The Lady' wants.

We have very serious crime here, thousands of lives torn apart, which would render the 'Hacking' of a few phones rather petty. It would certainly vindicate Tom Watson's Mafia attack on Murdoch today.

"we should never look to Cooper to expose the truth on this important matter."

@Barry,
Maybe you're right. Maybe he's been propagandized so effectively, he's beyond rehabilitation. But still, he did what he did, and we need to hold him responsible for it. These pharma tools in the media should not ever be let off the hook for the harm they've caused.

The source of the 'grading sheets' was the GMC, where they were examined as part of the evidence. Dr Wakefield's defence lawyers would have been given copies of this evidence before the hearing. I assume the BMJ got their copies from the same source. In his letter Dr Lewis states:-

"Dhillon’s grading sheets comprised check boxes for the pathologist to indicate the presence and severity of Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, plus a list of other headings: “infection,” “ischaemia,” “non-specific,” and “normal.” In one case Dhillon left the boxes blank."

Apparently, some of the sheets examined by Lewis post dated publication of the Lancet article and GMC examination of the biopsies from Child 11 were excluded from the GMC hearing because he was a US citizen.

I think it's allowable to go from more information to less, ie, from a biopsy slide to tick boxes, but not the other direction. By that I mean that you can't recreate all the information on the slide from a set of tick boxes. That's thermodynamics or information science or common sense or something.

Checking out Gorski's blog, Jake and Dan really have them squirming. What is apparent is that they are now playing defense. The tone (if possible) is shriller and ever more derisive.

Gorski's blog claims an air of moral superiority because (he writes) that the majority of his readers and posters who reject vaccine encephalopathy and brain damage are scientists and medical doctors. He doesn't have to spell it out- the withering omniscience is reminiscent of every doc with a God complex I have met.

Keep the heat ON! The thundering silence of Gorski's blog over Deer's carefully documented lying with regards to patient 11 is telling, as is Godlee's. Keep goading them. I think a Parlimentary investigation is just what is needed here- Godlee under oath to explain how the peer review missed the data, and indeed the letter from the parent of, patient 11.

I believe grading sheets are just tick box recording forms, although everyone involved with this exercise has been 'cagey' about the exact form and purpose of these unsigned and undated sheets.

From the original Lancet paper it was recorded that biopsies were taken from the terminal ileum, ascending, transverse, descending and sigmoid colons, and from the rectum. Do these sheets differentiate where these biopsies were taken? These differences are CRUCIAL.

There's absolutely NOTHING scientific about any of this so called BMJ 'evidence'.

Yes-and that's the crux of the matter. What these experts were told to review was a bundle of photocopies of unsigned and undated 'reports' of dubious provenance which could easily have been 'doctored' beforehand.

I don't know who you are, but it is my opinion that you have a moral duty to tell your story in a public forum. If Brian Deer told the truth about your son's case, tell us. If what Dan has unearthed is the truth (which it certainly seems to be), we all need to hear it from you.

Every parent who has been affected by this mess has a moral duty to help other children avoid the fate of their child.

You stand in a unique position to make a very big impact, please, for the sake of kids not yet affected, speak up.

After listening to Wakefield (link below), I think I have a better understanding of what's happening.

Dr. Wakefield met Dr. David Lewis, microbiologist, at a conference. Because of Dr. Lewis's interest, Dr. Wakefield provided him with documents which showed, contrary to Deer's pronouncements, that Wakefield had not analyzed or scored any intestinal biopsies. Dr. Lewis wrote to the BMJ. The BMJ, instead of admitting they were wrong, sent documents to a couple of "experts" who decided that the doctors who actually looked at the slides and analyzed them were incorrect. (These BMJ "experts" didn't look at slides. They looked at pieces of paper.)

Now Beavis and Butthead, I mean Godlee and Deer are accusing the doctors who actually did the slide analysis of fraud. They're going to bury their now obviously false accusation of Wakefield in their next flurry of false accusations and hope nobody notices they've been snookered.

Jenny wrote: " ... Most importantly- if these reports were not dated or signed, then they have NO scientific significance at all. Were the childrens' names on these reports or has the BMJ just made that assumption? They could even be control samples..."

***************

Lies are the best we can ever expect from these morally corrupt souls.

If the truth about this MMR crime ever gets out, it will bring the entire Pharmaceutical house of cards crashing down. And they know it will.

That's why they so fiercely attack anyone who comes close to exposing it, and it's why they're constantly fabricating stories to keep people distracted from it.

Lies are all they have, lies are all they know, and lies are the only things keeping them out of jail. At least for now.

Brian Deer gets to spew his lies ad nauseum in the comfort of a well lit studio, practically unchallenged at any point by Anderson Cooper. While Dr Wakefield ( ..or just 'Wakefield' as Cooper repeatedly refers to him) is presented in the dimmest, darkest, lowest quality media form imaginable, for the obvious purpose of casting Dr Wakefield in the most ominous light possible.

It's almost laughable when Anderson confronts Dr Wakefield with "... who is he a hit man for... he's an independent journalist who's won numerous awards!". Way to leave your integrity at home Cooper, and stick to a script that's obviously been well rehearsed!

A real journalist would never engage is such contrived theatrics, and we should never look to Cooper to expose the truth on this important matter. A real journalist would have placed these guys in the same room, and let them debate the facts in a forum that was fair to both of them.

Dr Wakefield would have taken them both apart, and that's why both Cooper AND Deer are both too afraid to ever engage him in a fair and honest debate.

They both concluded that there were no grounds to believe that any new inflammatory bowel disease was discovered by Wakefield et al.

So the BMJ has got hold of what was described as a 'bundle' of 61 unsigned and undated histopathology reports, said to be from biopsies taken from 11 of the 12 Lancet children.

Why biopsy reports on only 11 Lancet children? According to the original Lancet paper ALL TWELVE children were given intestinal biopsies as part of the study. Child 11 was from the US and therefore had no NHS referral notes, but in every other respect, his investigations were identical to the other childrens'. Why were child 11's biopsy reports not included in this bundle?

Why have these histopathology reports been ascribed to Dr Dhillon if they were unsigned?

Most importantly- if these reports were not dated or signed, then they have NO scientific significance at all. Were the childrens' names on these reports or has the BMJ just made that assumption? They could even be control samples.

"Unpublished data from the research that claimed links between MMR vaccine, autism, and enterocolitis reveal no enterocolitis.
In a surprising new twist to the Andrew Wakefield MMR scandal, the BMJ has obtained a bundle of pathology reports that further unmask how the appearance of links between the vaccine, autism, and inflammatory bowel disease was created at a London medical school.
The unsigned and undated reports are analyses of intestinal biopsies from children enrolled in Wakefield’s now infamous study published in the Lancet in February 1998."

What a nerve Fiona Godlee has!! In May 2011, she stood before the House of Commons committee on science and technology, chaired by Andrew Miller MP, and brazenly admitted the content of scientific and medical journals is heavily influenced by pharmaceutical and other commercial interestes, via sponsorship and other funding.

In the case of the BMJ and Brian Deer's articles in particular, Godlee has admitted receiving BMJ funding from MMR Manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline. James Murdoch is a director of News Corporation, which owns the Sunday Times, publisher of Brian Deer's original Wakefield MMR 2004 and 2009 articles, on which the 2011 BMJ articles were based. James Murdoch is also a director of GlaxoSmithKline, recently fined $3million dollars in the US for corruptly promoting medicines.

The Murdochs are presently in a great deal of trouble over phone hacking and illegal payments made to the police etc, by staff at the now defunct News of the World. Deer also used false identities to 'trick' parents of the Lancet 12 into allowing interviews, during his Sunday Times 'investigations'. Godlee's 'holier than thou' attitude seems to imply that all this Murdoch sleaze and corruption is nothing to do with the BMJ in spite of all these obvious and admitted conflicts of interest.

This latest Godlee BMJ Editorial tirade states that at "least six former senior figures at the London medical school where the (Wakefield et al research)work was carried out may have a case to answer over their involvement". Oh Deer!! It seems that Godlee too is now implying that the entire UCL is a 'tower of Babel' full of corrupt colluding doctors and scientists!!

Perhaps having a name like Godlee has given this woman delusions of grandeur!! Who does she think she is dictating to the UK Government and the UCL Directors? The only investigation needed here is into the murky links between the 'respected' BMJ and the Murdochs.

These poor children, made to suffer horrible pain and suffering, mentally and physically all for the 'greater good' of public immunity! When the rise in reported injuries and deaths start to surface, you would think our health institutions would step up and demand something done, but no, it's just business as usual ($$$). Where is the moral humanity? When is it enough, when 'autism' is 1/10, 1/5. Is this the new normal? Encephalopathy for everyone, mis-diagnosis and ignorance?!!! SICK!

Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of the BMJ group, told a select committee of the UK Parliament that “We have to acknowledge that the publishing industry has a number of different revenue streams, one of which is the pharmaceutical industry.”

Our community needs to send a thousand letters to Anderson Cooper - snail mail so they pile up in someone's office - asking him to read this series, fact-check every sentence if he needs to, and conduct an investigation that doesn't rely on information from "the marketing arm of the pharma industry."

Cooper doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who wants to be remembered for being suckered by the pharmaceutical industry to help it cover up devastating vaccine injuries.

My previous post quoted one of the anti-Wakefield public relations sites supposedly quoting Fiona Godlee. I've just read the version in nature.com and now I'm really confused:

"On 9 November, David Lewis of the National Whistleblower's Center in Washington DC published a letter in the BMJ arguing that Wakefield did not commit research fraud. Lewis told Nature that he thinks the combination of public charges and a slow, secretive investigation has left the public not knowing whom to believe and is unfair to the accused researcher. '[The system] throws people like Andy into a no-man's-land,' Lewis says....Articles by medical journalist Brian Deer published in the BMJ in 2010 and 2011 accused Wakefield of reporting histories for the children that were not consistent with their records and their parents' recollections, at a time when Wakefield was also being paid by lawyers intending to sue MMR manufacturers. Deer's articles themselves did not allege fraud, but on their basis a BMJ editorial in January 2011 called the paper fraudulent....Fiona Godlee, the editor of the BMJ, says that the journal's conclusion of fraud was not based on the pathology but on a number of discrepancies between the children's records and the claims in the Lancet paper. She says she will be calling for a public inquiry into the matter, noting that it has been more than a year since she first informed UCL about concerns over Wakefield's work...."

Apparently Godlee and the BMJ are ignoring the evidence of Deer's fraudulent reporting and doubling down on supposed absence of bowel disease. Of course, Child 11 was diagnosed with "indeterminate inflammatory bowel disease" before he ever set foot in the Royal Free, but that won't stop them. But what could they do, really, when they have no shame?

"Britain's leading medical journal, the BMJ, is calling on MPs to launch a parliamentary inquiry into research which claimed that the MMR vaccine causes autism and bowel disease, following extraordinary new disclosures about what it calls the elaborate fraud behind the work of Andrew Wakefield.

In an editorial in the journal, BMJ editor-in-chief Dr Fiona Godlee says that at least six further research papers by Wakefield require independent investigation and that at least six former senior figures at the London medical school where the work was carried out may have a case to answer over their involvement.

In a letter sent to Andrew Miller MP, chair of the House of Commons committee on science and technology, Dr Godlee says that if University College London, where Wakefield worked, does not immediately convene an independent inquiry into the Wakefield affair, then parliament must intervene."

Like Columbo, you methodically and convincingly show the cascade of falsehoods. The BMJ pattern of allowing this content to be approved and printed is telling. In enters ethical, logical, moral and legal ramifications. Thank you for not only showing Deer's beyond sloppy work but a festering financial motivation from across the pond.

From above:-
"A leading medical editor has warned that journals are rightly seen as the marketing arm of the pharmaceutical industry and they must go further to be open about where their money comes from.
Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of the BMJ group, told a select committee of the UK Parliament that “We have to acknowledge that the publishing industry has a number of different revenue streams, one of which is the pharmaceutical industry.”
Speaking before a committee hearing into peer review, Godlee was asked about the practice of many publishers producing sponsored publications – where companies can pay for special publications covering certain diseases or topics.
Such publications could be confusing to readers and it was not always clear what industry involvement was, she noted. And even traditional fully peer-reviewed medical journals should not be viewed as pure.
“It has been said that journals are the marketing arm of the pharma industry and that is not untrue; to a large extent that is true,” Godlee told the Science and Technology Select Committee,.
Godlee called for more efforts towards transparency in medical publishing, especially around centralised systems for declaring conflicts of interest and making explicitly clear when industry funding has been involved.”

The following is extracted from my letter to the S&T select committee, 23-05-11:-

"You will have to forgive me for finding Dr Godlee’s pious responses to the Committee (which I verified by listening to the proceedings),very hard to digest, in view of the fact that Deer’s articles were plainly commissioned by the BMJ’s pharmaceutical ‘paymasters’ and solely intended to preserve the interests of the MMR vaccine manufacturers GSK and Merck!!
However, Godlee DID admit to the Committee that journals ARE ‘the main marketing arm for the pharma industry’!! The vaccine industry makes £billions worldwide and Government indemnities in the UK and US means the manufacturers have few problems with litigation liabilities!!"